Eva has been more and more aware of faith and theological concepts lately. It fascinates me to hear what things stick out to her from stories or conversations we have, and what logical connections her little brain makes. It is also interesting to me how challenging it can be to describe to her the sometimes elusive concepts that describe having a relationship in an all-knowing, all-powerful, creator of all; a non-corporeal God, who then was a person for awhile and taught a lot of things and loved a lot of people and made a lot of people mad, but then died, then was alive again, and now is back in heaven and you can't see Him, but we can talk to him, listen to him, and thank him for things. It IS just a little confusing, right?
I also laugh at myself at the temptation to both under and over-explain faith concepts to her. Sometimes I give a one sentence "Jesus loves you," rainbows and butterflies, kind of answer, and I swear she kind of looks at me with an expression that says, give me a little more to work with here mom. Other times, I try to connect all the big concepts we've talked about and get all excited about how profound and amazing something is, and she pulls me back to earth with the one detail that she cared about in my long rant and the way she heard it. A friend gave us this super cute kid devo book this week and I was loving the reflection for the day and all she would talk about was the baby bird in the picture. :) Oh well. It is a good reminder that she is experiential right now, connecting the dots to her feelings and her world. I am always surprised actually when she asks a specifically theological question, since I mostly leave it up to her to probe or go deeper. I figure our job right now is to immerse her in relationships and ways of life that will be explained logically when she is older...
But I think I am getting closer and closer to perceiving what level she understands and responding to what she is actually putting together, which is really kind of fun. We have conversations about a lot of topics lately, where she explains things and connects the dots for me, and its both hilarious and touching to hear how her brain reasons. Whether its her idea of what clothes should match, or where dad might be when he's at work, to why things are scary or not - her little brain is definitely thinking.
Last night we were reading an Easter storybook that she always asks me to read her for bedtime. The book does an okay job of explaining to its characters - a family with three kids - how the Easter bunny/eggs, springtime, new life and Jesus are all related to Eastertime. I always read it a little differently then the author intended, however, and add a bunch of details around why Jesus was buried in a tomb with a big rock and then how he could be alive, and try to get across both how big of a deal dying was, and how big of a deal being alive again was. Lately she is wrestling with figuring out who God and Jesus are (as in both the same and different, we mostly stick to same), and wondering about where God is physically. And she's also been interested in connecting the creation story and Noah's animals to the idea that God made everything. During the story, she asked me about a dozen questions about the tomb, the stone, how God who was so strong and made everything could die, how God who was so strong was alive again, etc.
Then she paused and said, "I just miss Jesus... I am tired of him being in that faraway country, you know heaven?" I kind of melted, and asked her where she thought that was. She said it was too far away, and also "upstairs, maybe with our neighbors?" :)
I was thinking, yeah, its hard for most adults to not see him too... I get it. I've tried the whole "Jesus is with each of us" a couple different ways as an explanation, but she doesn't go for that one yet. I asked if she talked to Jesus when she missed him, and she said yeah, but she was still sad he was gone. I said Jesus is with us whenever we ask Him to be, and told her that we pray so that we can talk to Jesus and listen to Him too. She asked where Jesus' mom and dad were, if they missed him back in Bethlehem, or where they were. And she wondered if they were sad when he was behind the rock. Then she looked at me really seriously and said something roughly like, "Well, our house is really strong, 'cause God made it, and my books won't fall over, cause God made them strong too, but I think that God was really, really, really strong to get out and come from behind that rock!"
So - big creator God, overcomes big scary death, made all she has cause He is big and strong, and keeps her and her treasures safe, but is sometimes too far away to see or sense, and she wants to see Him more, so she misses Him. That is not a bad paraphrase of the message of Easter, actually. It is really fascinating what makes sense in a three-year-old's head, and what it helps me think about along the way!
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